"Don't fancy I haven't heard _that_!"

"Grandfather had inherited the plantation--"

"Sold his slaves, I suppose, to come to California and realize his
ambitions. Funny, how ideals change!"

"His abilities were recognized as soon as lie arrived in the new community,
and our wonderful grandmother became at once one of that small band of
social leaders that founded San Francisco society: Mrs. Hunt McLane, the
Hathaways, Mrs. Don Pedro Earle, the Montgomerys, the Gearys, the Talbots,
the Belmonts, Mrs. Abbott, Tom's grandmother--"

"Never mind about them. I have them dished up occasionally by mother,
although she prefers to descant upon the immortal eighties, when she was a
leader herself and 'money wasn't everything.' We never had so much of it
anyhow. I know Grandfather Ballinger built this ramshackle old house--"

Mrs. Abbott sat forward and drew herself up. She felt as if she were
talking to a stranger, as, indeed, she was.

"This house and its traditions are sacred--"

"I know it. Yon were telling me how mother came to marry a bad fast man."

"He was not fast when she met him. It was at a ball in Washington. He was a
young congressman--he was wounded in his right arm during the first year of
the war and returned at once to California; of course he had been one of
the first to enlist. He was of a fine old family and by no means poor. Of